


The Morning After

by edna_blackadder



Category: Black Books
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 08:32:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13073115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edna_blackadder/pseuds/edna_blackadder
Summary: The morning after a night that Bernard, Fran, and Manny really don't need to remember.





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [althusserarien (ArmchairElvis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmchairElvis/gifts).



> [Electricity Vodka, Sesame and Popcorn Daiquiri, and Phoenix Tears Spiced Rum are all real liquors.](http://mentalfloss.com/article/88884/get-weird-these-13-unusual-liquors) Hope this is messy and sad enough for you, althusserarien!

_The Morning After, Part I_

Bernard blinked. His head was pounding, but that was typical. Glasses? Glasses, must be somewhere—yes! He'd just light a fag and find some fizzy-good and more wine, and it would all resolve itself as soon as he located his clothes...what? Hungover and passed out at his desk, that was all fine, but in the normal course of events, he was wearing clothes.

'Manny!' Bernard screeched. 'What is the meaning of this? Find me clothes! And breakfast! And my lighter! Manny!'

'Aaaagh,' came a reply from the vicinity of Bernard's feet. He blinked, fumbling with his lighter, and gradually became aware of a dead weight curled around his leg. A dead weight with a beard. He shook his leg, and Manny moaned again.

'It's no good, Bernard,' murmured Fran's voice. He turned towards the couch and saw that while she'd managed to snag the blanket to cover herself, she was otherwise quite as degraded as Manny and himself. What? He peered down again...and yes, that was more of Body Hair Incarnate than he'd ever wanted to see. He turned back to Fran, who had managed to sit up, even as she looked ready to die. 'I've been trying to wake him for the last five minutes.'

'What were we drinking?' Bernard managed to ask, puffing on his cigarette, even as Manny's beard pressed more firmly into his ankle.

'Wine, more wine, Electricity Vodka, more wine, Sesame and Popcorn Daiquiri, more wine, and Phoenix Tears Spiced Rum,' Fran recited.

'Was it my birthday or something? What were we doing? Why?'

'We were comparing romantic failures after Rowena finally kicked Manny to the kerb,' said Fran, as Manny let out another groan of abject hopelessness.

'Oh, right, that's why you're back here,' Bernard murmured, before wrenching leg his out of Manny's reach. 'Right, up, earn your keep. Breakfast, now!' Then he turned back to Fran. 'Now, forgive me if I'm being'—he paused, before all but spitting out the next word—'obtuse, somehow, but can you possibly clear up how "comparing romantic failures" led to us all displaying our least flattering attributes for each other's perusal?'

'Long story,' said Fran, 'and not one you need to ever remember.'

'Excuse me,' said a voice from the doorway. Bernard blinked again, making out the foul form of...someone else, someone he didn't know and didn't ever need to know. 'I was wondering if you might point me towards—'

'Out! Out, can't you see we're closed?' Suddenly regaining his strength, as he had a particular knack for doing against all odds in a moment of righteous anger, Bernard leapt from his seat to stand on the desk, wagging his finger and also, he realised a little too late, something else.

The customer gasped. 'My God! Sir, there could be children present—'

Bernard shook his head. 'I hardly expect so. Even children can read a "Closed" sign. Only real dyed-in-the-wool pillocks like yourself are in any danger. Now out!'

'I'll be writing to the Council about this, make no mistake! Bookshops being used provide cover for dens of iniquity—'

'Yes, yes, they'll be fascinated. Now out!' With that, Bernard collapsed back into his chair, or attempted to do so. The chair had other ideas, rolling backwards at a most inopportune moment and sending Bernard flat on his back, face to face with Manny.

'Manny, lock the door, I won't have anyone else barging into my shop to find us like this. I'm going to freshen up.'

'Lock it yourself,' Manny mumbled from the floor.

Bernard glared. 'What was that?'

'Lock it yourself. I got you both off twice last night, it's the least you can do.'

As one, Bernard and Fran recoiled in shock, but Fran regained her composure first. 'Manny,' she said, her voice sweet like poison, 'won't you please fetch us some clothes, and also the hair of the dog?'

_The Night Before, Part I: Emma_

'Emma,' Bernard slurred, 'was a beautiful woman, which alone should have signalled to me that I had no chance. But I was younger then, you know, not so jaded and bitter and broken. I went out then, you know. I met her at my French class.'

'Oh?' Manny managed to ask, putting aside his bottle of Sesame and Popcorn Daiquiri. 'You went to an evening French class?'

'Went to one? I taught it, didn't I? _J'étais le meilleur professeur de tous !_ They all lined up to take my lessons. Students, old ladies, hapless wankers, I taught them all! But Emma was different. After every class, she'd stay and we'd talk for hours, and I was in love, and it was bliss! At the end of term, I proposed, and she said _oui_ , and for 24 hours, I knew what happiness was.'

'She thought you were saying you needed the loo,' said Fran, sipping her Electricity Vodka. 'You might have realized it if you'd ever actually marked her work, instead of just tossing all their papers in the air like a madman convinced of his own genius.'

'Yes, well, it's so easy, isn't it, teaching,' Bernard snarled. 'I'd like to see you try it.'

'All right, then, fifty quid says—'

'No,' Manny interrupted. 'No stupid bets. No changing the subject. You asked her, she said yes, and next thing you knew her friend said she was dead.'

'Yes!' Bernard shouted. 'All right, your turn, your turn. Tell me again what a delighted squawk Ro-WEENA made when she found your kazoo mixed up with her cosmetics, again?'

'I was just trying to recapture the magic of our early courtship,' Manny muttered, before breaking into a fresh round of sobs.

_The Night Before, Part II: Freddy_

'All right, I've had enough of Manny's weeping,' Fran declared. 'Bernard, tell us another story.'

'Don't suppose you'll be taking a turn any time soon,' said Bernard, glaring.

'All right, fine. Ben. Seemed perfect, turned out to be gay. Didn't know it, I had to tell him. Still sends me Christmas cards for “saving his life.” OK, Bernard, your turn. Say, let's make it more interesting. Why don't you tell us about that time you thought you were gay?'

Bernard scoffed. 'You know that one. Too much cologne and dancing.'

'But the sex with men was hardly objectionable,' Fran persisted. 'Wasn't there one bloke you kept on for a bit? Neddy, or something, was it?'

'Freddy,' Bernard corrected her. At that, Manny finally looked up.

'Not...not our Freddy? As in—as in—?'

'As in what, you bearded half-breed? Spit it out.'

'Not the man we house-sat for? The man whose seven-thousand-pound wine we drank? That Freddy?'

'They met at the British Museum,' Fran chimed in. 'Talked for hours, drank their way through the restaurant's wine menu, had a snog in the men's toilets, and then Bernard went his knees. It was all going quite well until one of the vermin in his hair bit Freddy on the thumb.'

'He hardly noticed,' said Bernard irritably. 'I may have been new to it, but I learn fast—'

'Yes, but unfortunately that particular vermin carried an interesting and fast-acting strain of disease, sending Freddy to hospital. So I sat with them in the ambulance, and when Freddy came to and didn't remember a thing, I told him all about how he'd had a few too many and Bernard so very kindly saved his life, a favor he has yet to repay.'

'Yes, furthering my attachments to idiots has always been a specialty of yours—'

'Oh, can it, both of you,' said Manny. 'I only agreed to play this stupid game because I wanted to hear about night you won't let Bernard remember.'

Fran paused, arranging her face into its most frightening expression. 'Manny,' she said, with danger in her voice, 'no such a night ever occurred.'

'Well, why not, then?' asked Manny. 'You could both do worse—well, not much worse, I grant you, but well—you're old friends. Why can't you just admit there's a reason you've kept each other around all this time?'

_The Night Before, Part III: Fran_

'If such a night had ever occurred,' said Fran icily, quaffing another shot of Electricity Vodka, 'which it has not, it would have been the result of my being dumped on New Year's Eve by one John Porter. Gorgeous, dashing, excellent conversationalist, brilliant painter—'

'—oh yes, they all think they're artists,' murmured Bernard, already halfway through the Phoenix Tears Spiced Rum.

'—and to this day, the last man to ever tell me he loved me,' said Fran, her shoulders trembling in the way they did when she was about to get truly angry.

'So in other words, a first-class wanker and you fell for it,' said Bernard. 'And so I had to take care of you, like always. I carried you home, sacrificing my body to save you from yourself in your drunken raging—'

'You called us a cab, except for the part where you didn't, you just ranted and raved and threatened the occupants of the first car to pass us. They haven't been let out of the psych ward yet.'

'Whatever. I brought you home. I saved you. And when the clock struck midnight, and we had no one but each other, you leaned in and we kissed, and then we—but I'm not allowed to remember.'

'For your own good, Bernard,' said Fran softly.

'How?' Bernard asked, his voice rising. 'How is this for my own good? I've wanted to ask you this for years. You and me, Fran, we're each other's oldest friends. We're the only ones screwed up enough to stand each other. How is it for my own good that we can't be together?'

'Bernard,' said Fran softly, 'I didn't want to tell you this, because you are my oldest friend, but—oh, I'm sorry, Bernard, but you were a bit rubbish.'

_The Night Before, Part IV: Manny_

'Yeah,' said Manny. 'He is a bit rubbish, isn't he?'

'Shut up,' said Bernard automatically, but it was too late.

'Manny,' said Fran slowly, 'what are you talking about?'

'Nothing,' said Manny, 'nothing, nothing—oh all right, it was after Jason Hamilton broke all our hearts. Bernard was wearing the cut-out of his head as a mask, and I was all swept up in his charm, you know, because it was Jason, and Bernard, the bastard, kept barking out orders, and we were pissed, and I said—you know, I was trying to be funny, so I said, “Next you'll want me to bend over so you can take me from behind,” and Bernard, he didn't get that it was a joke—'

'—because it wasn't a joke, you bearded imbecile, you thought I was Jason and you meant it with perfect sincerity. And you only realised it was me when—wait, when did you realise it was me?'

'When you were rubbish,' said Manny, and Fran nodded sagely.

_The Night Before, Part V: Fran and Manny_

'All right, that's enough,' Bernard snapped. 'I've had enough of these blatant assaults on my character. I am not rubbish, and what's more, I'll prove it to you. Both of you—clothes off, now!'

_The Morning After, Part II_

It didn't take long for both Manny and Bernard to pass out again,with Fran refilling their glasses whenever they looked away. She shook her head sadly, sipping her own umpteenth glass.

'Manny,' she whispered, once she was certain they were both well and truly out, 'it's Rowena's loss. And Bernard—you passed muster, this time. Goodness knows where you learned that trick...and may none of us ever remember it.' Then she keeled over, leaving only the mollusks curled round the pipes to tell the tale.


End file.
